


No Matter Where You Are

by SylvanWitch



Series: Ain't No Mountain High Enough [7]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Domestic, Established Relationship, Jealousy, M/M, Science Bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2019-02-02 14:24:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12728310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: Ever since The Incident, Tony's been acting strange.





	No Matter Where You Are

**Author's Note:**

> This title and all of them are from Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell's marvelous "Ain't No Mountain High Enough."

It was just another morning at the tower.  Steve had already worked out, thrown back a handful of almonds and a big glass of milk, and spent a half-hour browsing the _Time_ vault online.  He was up to 1982. 

 

When he wandered back into Tony’s suite to shower, Tony was still dead to the world.  Steve had gone to bed at midnight, after the nightly news, and hadn’t heard Tony come in.  It had probably been late, though, as usual.

 

For a big guy, Steve could be pretty stealthy, so he kept it quiet, gathering his clothes for the day and closing the bathroom door carefully.  They’d been together long enough now that he understood Tony’s patterns when he was onto something.  He knew Tony needed the rest.

 

Still, despite all of the evidence suggesting that Tony was going to sleep until noon, Steve was a little disappointed not to be joined in the shower for a little good morning sex.  There hadn’t been much sex at all, lately, and while Steve wasn’t in it only for the sex, he had to admit, if only to himself, that he’d gotten kind of used to regular affection of the hot and heavy variety.

 

For a time after The Incident, which is as direct as Tony ever got about it, Tony had been within arm’s reach almost all of the time.  It had gotten to the point that Steve had started feeling a little…suffocated.  But the scar over his heart had only just faded to near invisibility when Tony had started his disappearing act, and that had been two weeks ago, by Steve’s count.

 

The loneliness was getting a little old.  Hurried hand-jobs in the half-dark, Tony’s hands rough from the shop soap he used to get the grease off, his breath a fug of stale coffee and stomach acid…

 

Steve reminded himself for the umpteenth time that Tony’s work was important; it saved lives.  Hell, it had saved his on more than one occasion.  If he had to sacrifice some together time with Tony so that Tony could do lifesaving work, then who was he to complain? 

 

Some superhero, he thought, shaking himself out of the self-pity and dropping a gentle kiss on Tony’s cheek before heading out of the room.

 

In the kitchen, Nat was leaning against the counter next to the stove, watching Bruce cook.  She had a glass of virulently green juice in her hand and was sipping it like it tasted good, which Steve doubted.

 

Bruce gave him a smile over his shoulder and nodded to a platter of wheat toast already buttered.  “Help yourself.  I’m making tofu hash, if you’re interested.”

 

Steve wasn’t, but he was hungry, and he’d been in the Army, where he’d gotten used to eating everything on his plate, no matter how gross, so he said, “Thanks,” and set the table, moving easily around the other two, settling familiarly down to breakfast with them when Bruce had finished cooking.

 

It was like having a family, he reflected.  A quirky, sometimes violent, but always loyal family. 

 

“Where’s Clint?” Steve asked, directing the question to Nat, who was taking delicate stabs at everything but the tofu itself in the bright orange hash—turmeric, Bruce had explained, good for reducing inflammation.

 

Nat gave a one-shouldered shrug.  “Up north somewhere, I think.”

 

“Mission?”

 

She shook her head.  “Personal.”

 

“Oh,” Steve said, leaving it at that.  He hoped his surprise didn’t come across in his voice.  It’s just that he hadn’t known Clint really did _personal_ outside of the people in this building.  At least, not since Coulson…

 

“How about you, Bruce?  You working on anything?”  As segues went, it was a clunker, but if Bruce noticed the fumble, he didn’t indicate it.

 

He also didn’t really answer the question.

 

“Not much.  I’m tinkering with a couple of things for Tony, but you know…”

 

Steve did know, in general terms, but what he wanted was specifics.  There had been an awful lot of all-nighters lately, and frankly, he was getting a little tired of sleeping alone.  Of course, he guessed he could go back to his own place.

 

The thought made him scowl, and Nat kicked him gently under the breakfast bar.  “What’s up?”

 

He shook his head.  However he said it, he’d sound like a fool—jealous of Tony’s pet projects or petulant about the lack of attention.  He was a grown man.  He could entertain himself.

 

“You want to see a show today?”

 

Nat’s fork froze, gravity getting the better of a piece of red pepper, which missed the plate and landed on the counter instead.  It was the least graceful he’d ever seen her.

 

“Like…on Broadway?”  There was a careful neutrality in her tone that told Steve he was inviting more attention than he’d intended by the question.

 

“No, I meant a movie.  There’s a Kurosawa festival at the Ridmark.  I thought maybe it’d be fun to get a different perspective on Japanese culture.  I mean, from the one I had before, you know?”

 

Nat gave another half-shrug.  “Sure, I guess.  I didn’t have plans really.  Bruce?”

 

Bruce shook his head.  “Sorry.  I’ve got a couple of timed experiments running.  I have to stick around.”

 

Steve resisted the urge to question him again.  He knew that Bruce was evading him; he just didn’t know why.  He also knew that Bruce didn’t like not telling Steve the truth, so Steve bit his tongue, not wanting to put Bruce in an awkward position.  It wasn’t his fault Tony wasn’t sharing things with Steve these days.

 

Steve swallowed his pride—and his tofu hash—and turned the conversation to more innocuous topics. 

 

He was pretty sure Nat was humoring him when she offered to spar with him after breakfast, but she probably wasn’t when she flattened him two falls out of three, and as she offered him a hand up from the mat, she gave him a raised eyebrow that for Nat was a sign of harder questions to come if he didn’t spill.

 

But the team had only recently begun to recover from the damage Tony and Steve had done to it, and he wasn’t about to screw that up by spilling his guts over his boyfriend troubles.  Hell, Clint hadn’t made a rude remark about his and Tony’s relationship for at least a week before he’d gone out of town to wherever.  No, Steve was going to keep his mouth shut.

 

On the other hand, when Nat swept his feet out from under him and then sat on his chest, pinning his arms to the mat with her knees, he guessed he wasn’t going to be given a choice.

 

“I don’t want you interrupting the movies with girl talk,” she explained solemnly.  “So we do this now, the easy way, or I’m getting out the wet towel.”

 

He could unseat her, and they both knew it, but maybe he didn’t really want to.  After all, if she was going to all this trouble to ask…

 

“It’s no big deal,” he said, and then added, “Really!” when she pressed her forearm to his throat. 

 

“It’s just…Tony hasn’t been around much, and he and Bruce have been all hush-hush about what they’re working on.  It makes me wonder, is all.”

 

“You think he’s building a robot that will learn to think independently and try to take over the world?” she asked.  

 

“I think Tony would be disturbed that you think his creations are ‘robots,’” Steve tried, hoping to joke his way out of what he really thought, which was that Tony was rethinking their relationship—maybe…or something—since The Incident.

 

“Don’t deflect,” she answered, bouncing a little on his biceps with her knees to punctuate her point.

 

“I don’t know.  I just think, since The Inci—since I got shot, Tony’s been acting a little…off.”

“And you think that means he’s planning on leaving you?” 

 

There was no judgment in her tone.  She could’ve been asking him his opinion of the wall color in the gym.  It was one of the things he liked most about Nat.  She’d been through so much in her life, had so many of her choices taken from her, that she rarely judged anyone.  Steve knew that some people took her attitude as coldness.  He also knew that those people were wrong.

 

He tried to shrug, remembered his limited mobility, and mumbled, “Maybe,” without making eye contact.

 

With her usual almost preternatural grace, Nat was suddenly on her feet, hands on her hips, looking down at him.  She looked…  Well, Steve wasn’t exactly sure what her expression meant. 

 

“Am I in trouble?” he asked her, getting up with a little more effort than she had displayed.

 

Her silence was ominous, but he still couldn’t read her face.

 

At last, she said, “I think you do yourself and Tony a disservice by not having a little more faith.”

 

She might’ve hit him and made less of an impression.

 

Shame flooded him, filling his stomach with water and his cheeks with heat, and he ducked his head.

 

“It’s not that I don’t believe Tony loves me, it’s just—”

 

“You’re scared.”

 

“Maybe…  Yes.”

 

“So is he.”

 

“I know that.  I know he is.  And Pepper said that when Tony gets scared, he gets snarky.  But he didn’t get snarky this time.  In fact, he was sweet—too sweet, you know?  And then he was just…”  He threw his hands up in a gesture of helplessness.  “Gone.”

 

“He’s not gone, Steve.  He’s still here.  He’s just processing his fear.  You need to give him some time to work through it.  You didn’t see him in the waiting room at the hospital when Dr. Kent came out and told us that you were going to die.  You were unconscious for the part where he sat by your bedside without eating or sleeping for six days.  He looked like someone I’d never met.  I don’t think you’d have recognized him either.  It was killing him to see you like that, Steve.  That kind of trauma…it lingers.”

 

The shame threatened to choke him, but he looked her in the eye and took a deep breath, squaring his shoulders and nodding once to indicate that he’d heard her.

 

He felt her squeeze his arm, right over the bruise her knee had left, and the pain helped to center him even as the comfort of her touch reminded him that he wasn’t alone.

 

“I’ve been an ass.”

 

She shrugged, one lip curling up a millimeter at the corner.  “We all have our moments.”

 

“You still want to go to the movies with me?”

 

“Sure.  You’re buying the popcorn, though.”

 

*****

 

After the film, they got dinner at a greasy spoon near the theater and talked about Samurai honor codes and Japanese translations of Western cultural elements and whether _Rashomon_ would be as effective in color, and when they wandered back to the tower it was after nine and the whole place felt empty, washed in the blue-filter light of night above a big city.

 

Nat took lead as they walked into the communal living space, but she relaxed when they made out the silhouette of the tower’s owner near the sliding glass door out to the terrace.

 

Nat touched Steve’s arm and stood on her tiptoes to brush a kiss across his cheek and slipped away silently, only the lingering scent of her shampoo indicating that she’d been there at all.

 

Steve crossed the living room to Tony, taking care to make deliberate noise, not wanting to startle him.  Sometimes, when Tony was lost in the reverie of work, he didn’t really know what was happening in the space around him.

 

“Hey,” Tony said softly just before Steve got to him.

 

“Hey back,” he answered, stopping beside Tony, their shoulders just touching.

 

They shared the spectacular view in easy silence for a while.

 

“Where’ve you been?”

 

Steve told him.

 

“You and Nat, huh?”

 

There was something in Tony’s tone Steve couldn’t place, and looking at his profile, half-lit in the light coming in from the city beyond the terrace, did little to illuminate what was going on inside of him.

 

“I didn’t think you’d mind.  You’ve been in your lab a lot lately…”

 

“So this is my fault?”  Tony’s voice was low and carefully empty, and that more than the words themselves set off alarm bells for Steve.

 

“Why are we talking about fault?  It was dinner and a movie.  Nat’s our friend.”

 

Tony nodded as if in agreement, but by the set of his jaw and the tension in his shoulders, Steve knew that they’d settled nothing.

 

“You don’t really think I’m cheating on you with Natasha, do you?”  He tried to be light about it, tried to suggest how ridiculous they were both being for even suggesting such a thing.

 

“I don’t know, Steve.  I spend a few days in my lab—trying to save your life, by the way.  You’re welcome—and the next thing I know, you’re out on a date with the world’s most lethal flirt.  Gotta say, that’s quite a comedown from the perfect Peggy Carter.”

 

“Hey,” Steve said, confused and hurt—and angry _because_ he was confused and hurt.  “Don’t talk about Nat that way.  You know she’s not like that.  And leave Peggy out of this altogether.”

 

“Or what, Steve?”  There was a sardonic detachment in Tony’s voice that chilled Steve.  He hadn’t heard it directed at him in months, not since their experience on the mountain together.

 

Steve ignored the invitation to hit Tony:  “Stop answering me with questions, Tony, and tell me what’s really going on here.” 

 

Steve knew he sounded imperious and that it was the least effective tone to take with Tony, but he couldn’t seem to help himself.  He couldn’t believe that Tony was coming at him for going out with Nat when he wouldn’t have even asked her out— _as a friend, just friends!_ —if Tony hadn’t been ignoring him for weeks. 

 

“You’re not actually saying that you believe I’ve been cheating on you with Nat, are you?” he went on, and he sounded a little threatening now, which was, if possible, an even less useful approach, but Tony was giving him that infuriating smirk, the one that said, ‘Fuck you,’ as clearly as if he’d voiced the words aloud, and Steve wanted to smack the look off of his face, which was another thing he hadn’t experienced since the mountain. 

 

Steve steamrolled on, despite the increasingly ominous tells in Tony’s expression and posture.  “Because that’s insulting to her and to me, and I don’t think that’s the actual problem between us.”

 

“Oh, so you admit there’s a problem.”  The smirk turned up a notch, and Steve clenched his hands against the urge to grab Tony and shake it off of his face. 

 

“Well, clearly, since this is the first time we’ve exchanged more than six words in a row, and we’re using those words to tear each other up, there’s a problem.”

 

Steve took a deep breath, closed his eyes to erase the image of Tony’s sneer, and reached for a reservoir of patience he hadn’t had to tap in a long time. “Please, Tony, tell me what’s going on.  Why are you angry with me, really?”

 

“It can’t be because my boyfriend is dating someone else behind my back?”  Tony’s sarcasm was acidic, eroding Steve’s patience, but he held on to it, to his temper too, and tried again.

 

“It can’t,” Steve insisted.  “Because I’m Not. Dating. Nat.  I can get her in here to attest to that fact, if you’d like.”  He wasn’t above using the Black Widow as a shield if it meant that they could get past this absurd subject and on to what was really twisting Tony’s shorts into a knot.  He opened his mouth as if to call Nat back, and Tony made an aborted noise of protest and turned away from Steve.

 

The light from the city cast Tony’s reflection against the far glass wall where it elled toward the wall behind them, and even through the distorting shadows, Steve could see Tony’s anguish and despair.

 

“Tone,” he said quietly, risking rejection to put a hand on Tony’s shoulder.

 

Tony didn’t shrug out from under the touch, though he did stiffen up, saying, “Don’t,” through tight lips.

 

Steve didn’t let go, but he didn’t come closer, either, just stood there watching Tony move farther away from him without going anywhere at all.  Steve held on, though, hoping that maybe Tony would remember that they loved each other and that whatever this was between them didn’t have to break them apart.

 

Tony said something, but he spoke so quietly, just a harsh expulsion of breath, really, that Steve couldn’t make out the words.

 

He stepped a little closer but didn’t try to reach out with his other hand or touch Tony anywhere but at that single point of contact.  Under his hand, Tony’s muscles felt like his suit—unyielding and impenetrable.

 

“Say that again?”

 

“You left me.”

 

That was clear enough, though Tony’s voice sounded like it was coming from the far vastness of cold space, from somewhere in the region of the unfeeling, watchful stars.

 

He didn’t know what to say to that.  “I came back” was too flip, and “I didn’t mean to” sounded like a boy’s excuse for breaking a window.  This went deeper than words, this fear that drove him.  It had lived inside Tony for far longer than Steve had been in his life, this untouchable, maybe irremediable fear.

 

What could Steve tell Tony?  He’d already lived much longer than he should have, already survived against the odds too many times.  He was living now on borrowed time, but it was time he wanted to give to Tony.

 

“I can’t promise I won’t do it again,” Steve said at last, recognizing that there was no comfort in the words except in their honesty.  “But I don’t want to leave you, you know?  I love you.  I want to be with you forever.  Or at least, as long as I—or we—get.”

 

Under his hand, Tony’s shoulder began to shake, and he saw in the shadowy glass a gleaming trail of starlight running down Tony’s cheek.  Still, Tony didn’t turn to him for comfort or yield in any way beneath his touch.

 

Steve stood there, waiting, uncertain of his welcome in moving closer or his hazard in moving away.  It felt like everything that had ever mattered to Steve was suspended in the indifferent light of the city that cut the room into patterns of known and unknown and divided them with a bar of black across the floor between their feet.

 

Only his arm broke the pattern, bridging that darkness.

 

At last, soundless, Tony turned away from the window and looked up into Steve’s eyes.

 

“Forever, huh?” he asked.  His voice was throaty, hoarse with strain, his face damp, twin hectic spots aflame high on his cheekbones.

 

Steve drew him carefully in, wrapping his arms around his shoulders and holding without squeezing, giving Tony the space to pull away.

 

Tony’s arms went around his waist and drew Steve closer, and a breath went out of Steve with a loud sound in the quiet of the still room.

 

They stood that way for a long time, just breathing and holding each other, until Tony’s hands grew restless on Steve’s back and he pulled a little away to look down into his lover’s eyes, which were bright now not with tears but with mischief and warmth and love.

 

“I made you something,” Tony said, moving a little away but grabbing one of Steve’s hands and tugging him toward the elevator.  “Come see?”

 

Steve followed him into the elevator, crowding him into a corner to kiss him breathless, gratified and so fucking relieved when Tony groaned and sucked Steve’s tongue into his mouth and moved his hand to the front of Steve’s suddenly too-tight jeans.

 

But when the elevator dinged, Tony pushed him firmly away, and Steve went with a groan of his own, unsatisfied and wanting and cold where Tony’s body had left its impression on his chest and groin and thighs.

 

Tony said, “Jarvis, spot,” and a single, brilliant white light pierced the shadowed cavern of the lab, casting the rest of the space into deeper darkness but illuminating a familiar blue suit suspended from silver wires that arced down from the invisible recesses of the ceiling far above.

 

“What—,” he began, but Tony put a finger to his own lips, made a graceful spin, grabbed a 9mm from somewhere in the darkness, and fired it at the suit from two yards away.  He kept firing as he stormed the suit, and though the fabric jerked and billowed in the grip of the wires, it did not appear to be harmed, not even when Tony fired a final shot from point blank range, from closer to Steve than the kid who’d shot him had been.

 

Tony stopped and spun again, gun loose in his hand at his side, and gave Steve a look, half-expectant, half-defiant, as if he were braced for Steve’s disapproval over the clearly obsessive attention he’d paid to his newest creation, excluding even Steve himself from the experiment.

 

“This is what you were doing all those days and nights, making this suit for me?”

 

Tony nodded, waggling the gun as if to suggest that it should’ve been obvious.

 

“And it’s bullet-proof?”

 

Another waggle.

 

Steve approached slowly, reaching down to remove the gun from Tony’s grip, check it for safety, and put it aside, all without looking once at it.

 

He had eyes only for the man he loved.

 

“Thank you,” he whispered against Tony’s lips, trailing his own across his jaw and down his throat, at the same time skimming Tony’s shirt up his flanks, focused on impressing the words and the feeling that went with them into Tony’s skin one shivering inch at a time.

 

If later Tony complained that the floor was cold and that he had bruises in the shape of Steve’s fingers on his hips and if later still he was heard exclaiming that the suit wasn’t spooge-proof, you know, well, no one was around to hear it except for Jarvis, who was programmed never to tell.


End file.
